


Kleptomania

by FantasyFreak_2



Series: The Stealing Series [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Abuse, Child Abuse, Fluff, Gen, Good Slytherins, Happy Ending, Harry has problems but everyone wants to help him through them, Hurt/Comfort, Illnesses, Light Angst, Mentor Severus Snape, Neglect, Only kleptomania, Slytherin Harry, Well my version of it, at first he hates Harry, well later
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-26
Updated: 2018-01-05
Packaged: 2019-02-22 04:37:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 7,923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13159425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FantasyFreak_2/pseuds/FantasyFreak_2
Summary: Harry learned to steal very early by living at the Dursleys. It was the only way to get enough food.But after awhile he doesn´t only steal for his own good anymore. He isn´t even sure himself why he steals some of the things he is stealing.Now he goes to Hogwarts and has to balance his need for attention and inability to stop stealing with finally finding friends and discovering the wonders of magic. In addition there is something misterious guarded in the school. Surely it can´t hurt to steal it if he gave it back afterwards?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> It has been awhile that I wrote anything and I never wrote in english before. So forgive my mistakes.
> 
> This format with repeating the same phrase every paragraph is only in the prologue, I promise
> 
> Also this will be a shorter story but maybe I´ll make a series out of it.
> 
> Second chapter will come soon (hopefully)

The first time Harry stole he was five and he was really hungry. The Dursleys hadn´t fed him for two days now after he “destroyed” Dudley’s Action figure (actually Dudley did it himself by sitting on it but who would believe Harry)  
So when Aunt Petunia took Harry and Dudley shopping and Harry had to wait outside the store and he saw the apples on display he just took one and ate it. Nobody asked where he got it from and he managed to finish it before Petunia came back.  
He felt bad about it until he went by the store weeks later after closing time and saw how they threw away perfectly suitable food because it was too old. He didn´t feel bad anymore afterwards. Stealing food became a habit. 

The first time Harry stole something that wasn´t food was when he was seven. He learned to read relatively early because he didn´t need friends to do it and he could hide from Dudley while doing it. Of course Harry didn´t have any books himself but Dudley had (even though Dudley couldn´t read despite all of Aunt Petunia’s assurance otherwise). So he took one of Dudley’s books. Nobody ever noticed.

The first time Harry got caught was when he was eight. It was the same store where he stole the first time. The only reason the shop owner didn´t file a charge was probably because the underfed boy in the too-big-clothing and with the broken glasses looked pitiful. But he complained by the Dursleys. They didn´t especially care. A week without food, nothing Harry wasn´t used to. So Harry stopped caring about consequences to stealing.

The first time Harry stole something he didn´t even want, he justified it to himself. His victim was a bully anyway who always picked on him and everyone else. Harry only avenged himself by stealing that ugly watch he couldn´t wear because it was far too fancy. Afterwards he gave it to a homeless guy who said he could sell it. Harry told himself he was just trying to be a little bit like Robin Hood.

The first time Harry saw that he might have a problem was when he came into the little hiding place he made himself in the park nearby. Years ago it was full of food just in case the Dursleys where angry at him and wouldn´t feed him for awhile. Now it was full of little trinkets he didn´t want or need.  
Not that anyone noticed. Sometimes Harry thought everything would be a little bit better if someone ever noticed him. If they ignored his clothing and underweight maybe they would notice his stealing.  
They didn´t.

The first time he heard the name “kleptomania” he was ten. An old lady complained to her friend that all thieves should be in jail or better yet executed (together with blacks, gays, Muslims, the list goes on). She probably only used the word to sound clever but it got stuck in Harry´s head. He later looked it up in the library. He was intrigued but didn´t think much about it later. He needed to eat so he needed to steal it was as easy as that.

The first time Harry heard he was a wizard he was eleven. He had never been happier in his life.

The first time Harry stole in the wizarding world didn´t take long after that. It was in diagon alley. He wanted ink that changed its color. Hagrid didn´t want to buy it. So he stole it. He would have thought wizards would have special security systems. They didn´t. 

The first time Harry stole from a wizard was from a blond boy at the clothing shop. He was posh and Harry long ago learned that those types of people never noticed if you stole from then (and maybe, just maybe Harry would have liked a boy his age to notice him; the blonde didn´t, he didn´t even ask his name).

The first time Harry used magic, it was the Alohomora spell after he came back to the Dursleys. A spell to open every lock, of course Harry learned it before he went to school, even if it was marked in the book as “too advanced to learn alone”. He managed it after three days of trying.

The first time Harry was tempted to use his fame to get people to notice him was in front of the Hogwarts express. He silently had followed a family of red heads to the platform but out of habit made sure not to be noticed. If the mother was anything like the Dursleys she wouldn´t appreciate to be followed much less asked anything.  
Now he was standing on the platform with hundreds of people around him and felt very alone. Everyone else had parents with them or was greeting friends. Harry knew how wizards reacted when hearing his name. He saw it several times in diagon alley. If he said a word everyone on the platform would be swarming him.  
He didn´t. It wasn´t the kind of attention he wanted. He pick pocketed a rich looking girl with a pug face.  
Afterwards he managed to get his suitcase in an empty compartment and started to read. Nobody came by except a Trolley witch with sweets, a boy searching his toad and a girl who was helping him. None of them stayed long or talked much to him. Harry was used to that.

The first time Harry was actually noticed by hundreds of students was when he was sorted into Slytherin. It wasn´t especially positive attention but it was there. And the boy from Madam Malkins sat beside him and actually talked to him for several minutes.  
Harry didn´t steal anything from the feast.


	2. Getting noticed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sooooooo the characters in this chapter will probably be all characters I´ll really use for the rest of the story. As I said it will be rather short, probably five chapters. But if you really like it I would have an idea for a possible second part.

Everyone at Hogwarts was confused by Harry Potter.   
It started when the first years were brought in for the sorting. Everyone knew it was the year the famous Harry Potter started in Hogwarts but no one had seen him on the train so several people even stood up only to see him first between the new children.  
But there was no great entrance of the hero. No confident, good-looking boy everyone imagined. Even those who knew Harry´s parents (the teachers) had problems finding him between the other children.  
He had his father´s unruly hair but it was longer and covered most of his face. He also had similarities to his Fathers stature but he was smaller and always walked like no one should notice him instead of prancing around. And even if Harry´s glasses looked a lot like James´s had looked, his glasses were broken in the middle and held together by duck tape.  
His eyes were the color of his mother but no one saw them as he looked down on the floor. Actually it was kind of hard to see him at all. If it was habit, trained into him or some kind of magic the boy was invisible to everyone around him.  
People only started noticing him when he was sorted into Slytherin. But after the first excitement died down his invisibility started working again. It was simply too easy to overlook the small boy hunched down at the table.  
Even his classmates didn´t seem to notice that he didn´t participate in the talk about Quidditch and their rich and powerful families (not that Harry Potter had even the slightest idea about either of this topics). Only Draco Malfoy made an effort to talk to him and he only did that because his father told him to. But even so the eleven year old was soon distracted by more interesting things.

 

The first people in Hogwarts to actually notice Harry Potter were the Weasley twins. At the third day of school as most first years struggled to find their class rooms, they found Harry Potter in one of their secret passages writing on a parchment.  
“Wow, look at that Fred. A firsty finding his first secret corridor, how cute!”  
Harry looked up at them.”My first? It´s my third secret doorway today. I try to go systematically go to all of Hogwarts but the it´s quite annoying that everything changes places all the time. Well at least the classrooms stay where they are.”  
The twins looked at him and said in unison,”Are you sure you are in the right house?”  
“You think it´s brave to search for secret corridors?” Harry laughed. “There is hardly any danger to it and I doubt it is forbidden. Anyway, it is only simple logic to search for a possible escape routes around. How can you stay at a place and not know all the ways around? That is simply stupid.”  
And he left them standing there looking at him openmouthed.  
Later on the Weasley twins decided that Harry Potter would be a great Marauder in training, Slytherin or not, and started giving hints about more secret passages in Hogwarts. If Harry would further prove how good he was at finding them, they might even let him have a look on the map sometime.

And if one of the passages helped Harry stealing a nutrient potion from the Hospital Wing later on, he didn´t say anything about it. This potion could be live-saving. After all he knew what it meant to go hungry.

 

Severus Snape was the next to notice when he singled out Harry. After the boys surprising sorting into Slytherin, he had the smallest of doubts that maybe he wouldn´t be like his father after all, even if he looked a lot like him. So he was ready to either see Lilly in the boy if he showed himself to have been eager to enough to read his books before school and being able to answer all his questions. Or see James Potter in him if he would just give a snotty answer.  
Harry Potter did neither of those things. After not being able to answer the first question he asked, Snape was ready to tell himself that he was stupid to ever see something else in the boy than his good for nothing father.   
“A Bezoar is an antidote to most poisons, Sir.”  
Snape blinked twice, astonished to be proven wrong but he recovered fast. “Well at least I know that you know how to open a book. Maybe you even read a word or two in your life.”  
And then the boy did something to surprise him even more. Ask a question. “I´m sorry, Sir. But would a bezoar be able to heal food poisoning?”  
“Are you implying that Hogwarts is poisoning its students?”  
The boy shrugged his shoulders. “Well I´m not always going to be at this school. And if you leave food lying around too long it can make you quite sick.”  
Snape did know that from experiences in his childhood but he had no idea why the boy would ask this. Still he always rather encouraged questions. Better the brats asked now instead of exploding their cauldron later.  
“Yes it would, Mr. Potter.” Snape was nearly ready to take points from the boy just because he didn´t answer his first question and looked so much like his father. He probably would have, had the boy been a Gryffindor. But Snape really didn´t like taking points from his own house. He rather liked seeing Slytherin wining the house cup. “One point to Slytherin for answering my question correctly and another one for asking one of your own. Well? Why aren't you all copying that down?”

The problem for Severus Snape was that he had wanted to see Harry Potter either as the embodiment of everything he hated in form of James Potter or everything he loved in form of Lilly Potter. But after the first lesson Severus Snape had to realize what he really saw in Harry Potter was himself that age. And he really didn´t know if he liked that or not considering how his life went down.  
The next day a Bezoar was missing from his stock.

 

And the last person to really notice Harry was Draco Malfoy.   
Harry used the first few days to make a stock of everything he thought he might need in a class room no one used. He stole potions from Madam Pomfrey who didn´t even noticed – too busy healing a constant stream of students to see if a potion more or less was used. He stole the bezoar from Snape but after his head of house made a really scary announcement the next day about it, Harry didn´t steal from him again. He went to the kitchen for food but didn´t steal anything because the House elves nearly fell over themselves to give him everything he wanted.  
But most things he stole from Draco Malfoy. Mostly because every time he stole something from him his father just send more. It was kind of funny just to see what would come next with the owl post. He stole extra clothing, books, special feathers that moved by themselves, owl treats for Hedwig, sweets he never saw before, a chess board which looked like it was carved from diamonds (the week after Draco got one that looked like melted emeralds - probably to congratulate him on being sorted into Slytherin - but still Harry thought he got the better deal).  
Harry made it a habit to always go last to breakfast so he could check everyone’s beds and trunks for interesting things. And no one wanted to go to breakfast with him anyway so no one noticed or cared. So he started to cram through Draco´s trunk without looking around thoroughly.  
This morning though, he was interrupted by a bored voice behind him. “Please steal the Miniature Quidditch game. I tried to convince Father to buy me the new version for weeks now but he wouldn’t as long as I had the old one.”  
Draco Malfoy was leaning in the door way behind him.


	3. Making friends

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I didn´t actually wanted Neville to be a major friend to Harry so early on in the story but it kind of happened so I´ll work with it.
> 
> Draco is a bit of an asshole at the moment but he is eleven and grown up with his parents. He´ll get nicer later on.
> 
> Oh and as far as I have read up about kleptomania, it can have several reasons and often comes with other psychological issues, so I just made my own up which I will explain later on in the story. But whatever the reasons of why they have it, people with this disorder need help and the Harry Potter of my story will defintly get it later on.  
> I hope I don´t misrepresent this illness completly or insult anyone with what I´m writing.

Stealing things with Draco was both fun and nerve-wrecking. Fun because it was the first time Harry had something resembling a friend. They planned (stealing) together, they laughed together (mostly about stealing), and they played pranks (by stealing things).  
Even if Harry was the one to do the actual stealing and Draco might be only using him – Harry wasn´t stupid even if he was desperate to have a friend, he knew Draco wouldn´t hang around with him if he didn´t get anything out of it. And to be fair, Harry got just as much if not more out of it, at least from his point of view. He would have stolen things even if Draco wouldn´t have said a thing but by working together he got a lot of information about the people around him he never knew. Draco seemed to know everything about everyone and how to use it.  
He knew Pansy Parkinson was vain and had the most expensive beauty products but that she also was too stupid to notice when they went missing. And her desperation when they switched one of her hair products to one that made her hair yellow was extremely entertaining.  
Zabini Blaise had even more expensive things than Draco because his mother readily used her money (that she got from killing her seven husbands) on him rather than her time. Harry would have sympathy with him if Blaise if he wasn´t rather unpleasant to everyone around him. Theodore Nott on the other hand came with bruises and scars all over his body to school and after he got a look on Harry´s collection of scars and his malnourishment they both seemed to have gotten to an agreement to keep out of each other’s ways (Harry still stole some bruise cream out of the hospital wing and left it to Theodore but he didn´t know if his classmate knew it was him).  
Crabbe and Goyle were too stupid to realize anything was stole from them but there things mostly consisted out of food. And they were so stupidly loyal to Draco they would have given it to him anyway. Harry had to say they were good body guards to Draco but he didn´t trust them so he insisted that any and every planning with Draco was made far away from them.  
The last person Draco pointed Harry to was Daphne Greengrass. She took stolen (or otherwise sustained) goods and managed to sell them for a good price. Harry rarely made use of her talent but Draco liked the things she could get them.  
All in all Draco and Harry quickly moved on from stealing from Draco himself. Even though “stealing” his things meant his father send replacements, they knew that soon he would have wanted to investigate who was taking all of his son´s things. They didn´t want the attention.  
But the wide selection of rich Slytherins to steal from it was easy to steal without getting noticed. After Harry managed to get in the other Common rooms (it wasn´t that hard, all you had to do to get in the Ravenclaw tower for example was solve a riddle and the Gryffindors weren´t very careful with their passwords) they could even widen their field to the other houses.

No, there were only two things that really disturbed Harry by working with Draco.  
The first thing was that Draco sometimes seemed downright despicable. The first people he wanted to Harry to steal from were the Weasleys. On Harry´s question what you could steal from the poorest wizarding family in Hogwarts (Harry was a thief he noticed the old cloaks and wands the Weasleys used) Draco just shrugged.  
Harry was the first to admit that Ron Weasley was rather obnoxious and used to mock everyone in Slytherin, but he had to say the boy became much nicer after starting a friendship with Neville Longbottom.  
Percy Weasley could be annoying at times but he also always was ready to help any first year no matter the house.  
And Harry wouldn´t have dreamed to steal from the Weasley twins after they more or less seemed to have adopted him. They always helped him find new secrets in the castle and let him help with several of their pranks (Professor McGonnagall wasn´t amused after catching them on one of them but after giving them all detention she actually mumbled a teary eyed “You are just like your father his age” – Gryffindors were strange people, Harry decided).  
After Harry wouldn´t steal from the Weasleys Draco pushed him into stealing Neville´s Remembrall. Harry was actually so fascinated by the magical device that he hadn´t considered the toll it would take from the nervous and insecure boy. But after seeing him break into tears before their first flying lesson Harry gave it back to him in private (afterwards Harry thought it was a good thing that Neville was to hysterical at the lesson so that Madam Hooch forbid him to fly, because Neville managed to have an extraordinary number of accidents even with both feet on the ground). Harry felt even worse after Neville thanked him countless times even though Harry admitted to have stolen the Remembrall.  
“You…you…you didn´t had to give it back to me”, the boy stuttered. “I…I know I…I wouldn´t have been able to ge…get it back even if I´ve had known you had it. I´m a coward; everyone knows I don´t belong in Gryffindor.”  
“Well you think I´d be brave enough to face anyone? I´m such a coward I make sure no one notices me so I don´t get bullied.” Harry looked down in shame.  
“Ma…Maybe we can manage to…to be a bit braver together?” Neville forced a laugh. “Or you could at least teach me how to not be noticed.”  
Harry looked up and smiled. “I don´t know if you really want that but I could teach you a trick or two. I know a few shortcuts around here. They could at least help you to avoid some people. But maybe we should talk about it in secret. I don´t think Draco or Ron would like it if they knew we talked.”  
After that Harry sometimes sat with Neville in the library when everyone else was busy. Sometimes they were even joined by a Gryffindor girl named Hermione Granger. She could be a bit overbearing but was also really helpful with homework. Neville seemed less nervous altogether after learning a few tricks from Harry. Even Harry himself felt a little more confident after finding out there were people who wanted to hang around with him without second thoughts behind their actions (Neville was the most honest person he ever met, no way that he could lie about something like that).

But there was still the second reason Harry had problems with Draco helping him steal. But this problem wasn´t so much Draco´s fault and much more his own. Now after finally being in safety surrounded by people who swore to protect every student (the teachers) and with more than enough food on the table, there was no denying it: Harry sometimes stole things without a reason. He stole things that were completely useless without Draco asking him to. Sometimes he didn´t even notice he did it until he was in the middle of the act.  
Draco didn´t understand why someone would risk doing something forbidden without gain to themselves. And Harry couldn´t hold it against him because he himself didn´t quite understand it either. He just had to do it. It was like his hands had a life of their own.  
Maybe there was something wrong with him? He wished he could talk about it but he still wasn´t sure if Draco wasn´t just using him, he doubted the Weasley twins would understand (for them sneaking around and playing pranks was good fun not some kind of compulsion), Neville had enough to do with his own problems and Harry didn´t trust adults enough to talk to any of them. Especially since he got the feeling that his head of house didn´t like him especially, McGonnagall kind of scared him, Dumbledore just seemed crazy and he didn´t really know any of the other teachers.  
So he just stayed silent.

After awhile he realized he stole less on days when he worked together with Draco to steal something or even went with the Weasley twins playing a prank. So maybe stealing was just something he had to get out of his system. And he had an idea how to keep himself busy:  
The door on the third floor hadn´t gone from his mind after Dumbledore spoke of it. Dying a horrible death didn´t seem especially appealing but Harry honestly doubted anyone would put something in a school that would kill the students. No, the director probably only said that to keep people away from it.  
The problem was that no one else seemed interested. Some Gryffindors apparently went in the corridor a few weeks ago but after none of them came very far they´ve given up out of boredom. The Weasley twins wouldn´t invest their time in it since nothing funny or useful for a prank would probably come out of it. Draco wouldn´t see something valuable in it either and Neville would just be too frightened.  
So, to stop himself from his alarming tendency to steal without reason, Harry would make it his project to get through the corridor to whatever was guarded at the end and steal it.  
He could still simply bring it back afterwards if whatever was hidden didn´t interest him.


	4. Traps and mirrors

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I actually had this chapter finished days ago but hadn´t managed to look it over because of silvester-craziness. I hope to get the rest out sooner.
> 
> I wish you all a happy new year

Harry soon realized that stealing the stone wasn´t going to be as easy as it looked in the muggle movies he had managed to listen in at the Dursleys. Or as cool. Mostly the entire operation consisted out of a great deal of boredom and repetition interrupted by short bursts of excitement.  
At the start it seemed rather exciting. A three-headed dog that attacked people. He first heard of it by a group of Gryffindors who snuck by the door and who talked about it excitedly afterwards. They had fled the room after seeing the monster and talked about what the dog was guarding since they didn´t saw any riches in the room and there was no door except the one where they came in.  
Harry afterward went to the room himself and saw the trap door the dog was standing on. Sadly he couldn´t get to it as long as the dog was there. So he went to the library and looked at the books about monster. There were no three-headed dogs to find in them. Either it was a breeding that didn´t exist before or they were so rare no one knew about them – or at least so rare no one wrote it in a book for school children.  
So he tried another direction. The dog, no matter how many heads he had, was still a dog. So how do you distract a dog?  
First he tried fresh flesh he got from the kitchen but as long as he himself was in the room the dog concentrated on him rather than the flesh. Apparently he was a trained guard dog. Harry´s (much hated) Aunt Marge owned several guard dogs and she usually used a dog whistle to get them to obey her. Harry didn´t have such a whistle. The nearest thing he could steal was a mouth organ. That wouldn´t work. That defiantly wouldn´t work. Harry could spontaneously list several reasons why that wouldn´t work. But he had learned that as a thief sometimes you just had to try every route no matter how impossible it sounded.  
So Harry decided to try it and to his astonishment the dog started to fall asleep after a few off-key sounds escaped him (Harry wasn´t a music person).  
Harry managed to get to the trap door and open it without stopping to make a melody that sounded like a cat dying. The trap door opened to hole that was too black so see much of anything. Harry took a small stone that was lying around, threw it in and counted. After he heard the muffled impact he shook his head. If he fell so far he could potentially break his leg.   
The next night he returned with a stolen broomstick and used it to fly over the weird plant directly under the trap door and into a room with keys that flew around. It was easy to find the key that fit in the lock and catching it proved to not be a problem either.  
Harry couldn´t believe his luck as he went gleefully in the next room. It was a chess board. Harry Potter had never in his life learned even a single rule of chess. He sighed, turned around and used the broom to get back.

And from this point on Harry´s plan to get into the corridor slowed to a grind. He read up about the rules of chess but knew it wouldn´t be enough to beat the giant chess board. Just as with the dog he tried anyway. His king was beaten after five moves and the chess board returned to normal. Harry tried three more times and returned afterwards with low-spirits.  
He would never learn enough about chess before whatever was hidden in Hogwarts was moved. He thought about asking Draco (an extremely good chess player) to come with him but his pride was in his way. He wanted to manage this on his own.  
So he made another plan: Every night he went down the trap door and played against the chess board and wrote the moves of the board in a notebook. The next day he went through Hogwarts and asked students to play with him and used the same moves the chess board used against him. If he was beaten he noted down how the students staved off the attacks of the board.  
The chess board (Harry soon found out) was like the ones you could find on muggle Computers. Like a rather bad AI it always followed the same moves. So piece by piece Harry managed to make a defense plan out of what other students showed him.  
The plan had its problems. Draco started getting suspicious of him after Harry started playing chess with every person he could find except him (Harry knew that Draco would notice if he used the strategy of another against him again and again so Harry didn´t play with Draco). Harry told him that it was only because Draco far superior to Harry and he wouldn´t win a game if he played against Draco. Harry didn´t think Draco believed him.  
Another problem was that Harry had to sneak out every night and teachers and Mr. Filch were patrolling the corridors. One time Harry was nearly caught but he managed to get into an unused class room. There he found a mirror that didn´t reflect what was before it. Instead it showed Harry surrounded by people. Neville Longbottom was standing on his right side smiling shyly and holding the hand of Harry´s reflection behind his back. Draco Malfoy was on his left side with his signature smirk but an unusual amount of warmth in his eyes and held Mirror-Harry´s left hand behind his back. The Weasley twins were behind him with their twin smiles and far in the back Harry thought he saw his potion teacher watching him. Severus Snape wasn´t smiling. Even a magical mirror could probably see how impossible that would have been.  
Harry returned to the room the following night instead of going to the trap door. A giant chess board didn´t seem half as interesting as the curious mirror. He didn´t know why he was so fascinated by the mirror. He wasn´t even sure what it really portrayed. It reminded Harry of looking in a kaleidoscope. Fascinating even if it wasn´t showing anything his brain comprehended. He sat entire nights in front of it. He stopped sleeping and spend his days in a daze, even stopping to steal for awhile.  
He probably would have forgotten all about his plan and visited the mirror until the end of the school year if Albus Dumbledore wouldn´t have suddenly appeared behind him on one of these nights.  
Harry´s explanation to what he saw in the mirror seemed to surprise the man. Dumbledore explained the use of the mirror and told him he would move it to another place where Harry wouldn´t find it.  
Before leaving the room, the old man looked at him one last time. “Harry, you should realize that even if I´m just as confused as you on what the mirror is trying to show you, I can tell you this: Whatever you search from your friends, you will not find it in a mirror.”  
Harry lay awake long that night. He felt a bit better knowing that even the greatest wizard of modern times – according to Chocolate Frog Cards – could be just as dumfounded by magical items as the rest of them. So maybe the old wizard was wrong. Ultimately the mirror did actually fulfill one of Harry´s desires – he had stopped stealing for awhile, to fascinated thinking about the mirror to do it. Hadn’t that been the plan all along? Maybe he should search for the mirror again?   
But when Harry woke up the next morning, clear minded for once in the entire week, he saw the relief in Draco´s eyes. Neville Longbottom told him how happy he was since he had thought Harry had grown tired of him after not meeting him for so long. The Weasley twins showed him the prank they would have soon played on Harry to get him back to normal.  
No the mirror hadn´t been a solution.  
It seemed like he had to return to his quest of stealing whatever was hidden behind all the traps.

Harry managed to finally beat the chess board two weeks before Halloween. Slightly wary he opened the next door and shut it again immediately. The stench was terrible. Even more terrible was the thought that he had to find a way to beat a troll with only first-year-spells.  
Harry was astonished by his luck when on Halloween a troll suddenly appeared in the castle of Hogwarts. In the following chaos Hermione Granger, Ron Weasley and Neville Longbottom somehow managed to stop it by letting its own club fall on its head. It sounded like the most cliché Gryffindor-story you could invent. Still Harry was happy for Neville who seemed to have gained confidence and one more long-term friend in Hermione.  
Luckily Harry managed to recreate the story he heard and knock out the troll the next night. But it made him even more guarded so he didn´t walk into the following room. Instead he let the parchment that lay on the table together with several bottles fly over. He read it over decided that he himself wasn´t nearly good enough at Riddles to risk getting poisoned and took the parchment together with a sketch he made of the bottles on the table back to the Slytherin common room.  
After trying his best to solve the riddle himself, he got over his pride and double-checked it by showing it to Draco. Draco seemed even more suspicious, especially with Harry´s half-backed excuse that a family member send him the riddle as a bet and Harry didn´t want to lose. But in the end Draco did help and together they solved it pretty easily.   
Harry still took the bezoar he stole from Snape with him, just in case they were wrong and he was about to be poisoned. Luckily he didn´t need it and he got through the fire and into the last room where…  
The Mirror of Erised waited for him. Harry had some serious questions about the mirror policy in this castle.  
Harry stepped in front of the mirror just hoping he finally after weeks would find out what was hidden under such extreme measures. His reflection winked at him, and took a red stone out of its pocket. When it put the stone back into its pocket, Harry felt a real stone seemingly materialize in his trousers.  
He pulled it out. It had the color of blood and irregular edges. Harry had no idea what it was.

The next day Harry was sitting on in front of a window staring out on the grounds of Hogwarts and felt kind of shell-shocked. After searching in the library for important magical stones, he found out what was hidden behind all those traps.  
Apparently he accidently stole the philosopher's stone. Oh dear.


	5. Getting help

Harry had no idea what to do with the stone now that he found it. He didn´t want or need more gold and he defiantly didn´t want to live forever. Even if his life in Hogwarts was much better than the one with the Dursleys, Harry always had the feeling it was just a short pause until he will be thrown back in the harsh life outside the castle. A hundred years of that life was enough already.  
And the stone belonged (at least according to the books he read) to Nikolas Flamel. Did that mean Flamel would die now after he stole the stone? Had he killed the man and his wife?  
But that was ridiculous he doubted the man went to all those traps to the mirror every night to get his life elixir. It was far too long-winded to do that every night and Harry would have defiantly seen it. So Flamel had probably a stock of the elixir. The question was: How long would it hold. And would someone else notice the missing stone until then?  
Harry really would have liked to put the stone back where he got it from but how do you put a stone back in a mirror? Should he just lay it down before the mirror? Throw it at the mirror? He was pretty sure that would break the glass and he didn´t want to make even more chaos.  
The more problem was that now that his project was over, he started stealing again without wanting to. While getting the stone he sometimes stole a little bit on the side but was too distracted to do much but now it was like a flood gate was opened and he just couldn´t stop it.

Several days later Draco Malfoy entered the empty class room where Harry sat anew in front of the window looking at the sinking sun. It was the class room where he hid most of the things he stole. Right now it was decorated with a banner of every house that harry stole from the common rooms, a toy that looked like a flying fairy that glowed, shelves filled with books, several mini Quidditch players flying through the air, three chess boards, two piles of Chocolate frog-cards (two of ever existing one and Harry would have made a third but had gotten bored), several pillows and covers, an entire bed, several expensive mirrors (which actually showed your reflection, damn you Mirror of Erised) and a Christmas tree with ornaments and burning candles (it was only a few weeks until the holidays started).  
Harry first hid the things he brought to the class room under a loose deal board but after it had gotten more and more full he gave up. Everyone who would enter the room would see it was full of things that shouldn´t be there but Harry didn´t care. None of those things mattered to him anyway.   
Draco looked down at him sitting at the window. “Longbottom is worried about you. So are the Weasley plagues.”  
“Since when do you care what they think?”  
“Since you befriended them without asking me.”   
“Do I need your permission?”  
Draco folded his arms. “I thought I´m your friend.”  
Harry had to swallow the rather big lump that seemed to have built in his throat. “You are.”  
“Then tell me what is happening. You go out every night, you have this room full of nonsense that you probably stole and I don´t know why. Who needs three chess boards? You are terrible at chess!” Draco started sounding desperate at the end of his little speech.  
Harry didn´t know what to say. For years he had wished someone would care enough to ask him that question and he still didn´t know the answer. Why did he steal all this stuff? “I… I…”  
“Please.” Harry had never heard Draco beg before. “Please just tell me. I just want to understand.”  
Harry felt something run down his cheek. He hadn´t noticed that he started crying. “I´m sorry Draco. I am so sorry but I don´t know. I just don´t know why. I can´t stop.”  
“How can you not stop? Just don´t steal anything.”  
“I can´t. I have to steal.”  
“Why?”  
“I´ll starve”, Harry nearly shouted.  
He hadn´t meant to say it. But it had always been his first respond to himself when he wondered why he continued stealing.   
The following silence was deafening. Harry didn´t dare to look up at Draco. Surely the rich boy who had always gotten all what he wanted wouldn´t understand. Maybe he would be disgusted by his desperation for something as simple as food like the other people in Primark Drive had been when they saw it.   
And then Draco hugged him. Harry had never really been hugged before. As much as he liked his new friends (Draco, Neville and the Weasleys) they weren´t on the level of hugging each other yet. So Harry didn´t really know what to do. He just continued sitting as if he was frozen while Draco hugged him from behind.  
“I would never let that happen”, Draco whispered in his ear. “Never again.”  
Harry blinked. “You can´t stop it. You´re just eleven.”  
“I´m rich.”  
“Your father is rich.”  
“And if I ask him he would give you all the money in the world.”  
“If I go back to the Dursleys this summer they will just take the money”, Harry sobbed. He couldn´t understand why Draco was making such an effort.  
“Then I won´t let you go back there.”  
“The adults will force me.”  
“When Theodore came with all those bruises to Hogwarts this year, Uncle Severus made arrangements so that he wouldn´t have to go back. He´ll make the same for you if we ask.”  
Harry shook his head. “He hates me.”  
“I don´t think he hates you. But even if it was true that wouldn´t stop him from helping you. Adults aren´t like that.”  
“The adults at my old school were.”  
“That were stupid… Muggle adults!” Draco apparently thought that was the worst insult you could give an adult. “Severus is my godfather and I know him. He would never let an abused child go back.”  
“I´m… I´m not…” Harry couldn´t end his sentence. He just shook his head and continued sobbing.  
“Don´t cry”, Draco pleaded. “I´ll make sure Uncle Sev will get you away from them before you know it. And then you can come to Malfoy Manor this Christmas. The house elves always make sure our house looks really cool on Christmas. And we have a Quidditch pitch where we can fly. Just try not to steal everything that is lying around, ok?”  
Harry had to smile through the tears. “I´ll try. I really tried the last weeks too, you know. I made myself this huge project to stop myself from stealing. But it didn´t really work out.”   
Draco nodded. “Doesn´t matter if it didn´t work immediately. We´ll work it out together. At least you´re ready to try your best. That is the important part.”  
They sat together in the class room while the sunlight was slowly fading away. Harry´s sobs died down slowly.  
“Draco?” Harry´s voice sounded hoarse after crying.  
“Yes?”  
“You think Professor Snape will still help me if I tell him I stole the philosopher´s stone?”  
“You did WHAT?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this story is already nearly finished. Only the epilogue is missing but you can already see how it will end from here. Write in the comments if you want a second part. I already have some ideas for the chamber of secrets, only that it will start at Christmas when Harry is at Malfoy Manor.
> 
> But either way it could take some time. I only wrote this story so fast because its the holiday. The next month all of my exams from college are starting and trust me Chemistry exams aren´t fun.
> 
> Well the epilogue is already finished so you can at least look forward to that tomorrow.


	6. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last chapter already. Wow this happened fast. I hope I´ll see you all back at a second installment of this story (can´t promise when this will happen though).

“That boy will not return to his family.” The shout in the headmaster´s office was followed by the dramatic entrance of the potions master.  
Albus Dumbledore sat in the chair behind his desk and looked over his folded hands up to Snape. In his kind voice he asked, “Who will not return to his family?”  
“You know who I mean.” Severus Snape didn´t seem impressed with the antics of his superior. “You send Lily´s boy to Petunia of all people. And after he came to Hogwarts you let him steal the philosopher´s stone!”  
“So he gave it back?” Dumbledore seemed pleasantly surprised. “I wondered how long it would take him. That boy quite obviously had no use for the stone. It was only a question what he would do with it after he had proven to himself he could steal it.”  
“Why did you even let him steal it in the first place? Or let him steal all the other things from his class mates?”  
Dumbledore sighed. “Sometimes people first have to see that they have a problem before you can help them. Mr. Potter doesn´t trust easily – something, I have to say, that is at least partially my own fault. I had hoped that Petunia would see the error in her ways after being confronted with an innocent child. I should have checked on the boy more often but the war left behind many orphans I tried to take care of. Many, I fear, that had been worse off than young Mr. Potter. And the second war in my life time left behind a tired, old man.”  
Dumbledore stared into space a few moments then he stood up and clapped his hands together. “Well, it is no use to cry over spilled pumpkin juice. I had already reported to the ministry that Mr. and Mrs. Dursley are not suited to take care of Mr. Potter. I just hadn´t found another place for him that holds the necessary protection for the child. But since you came rushing into my office so enthusiastically I suppose you already have another guardian in mind?” He raised an eyebrow.  
Snape blinked. “You already took their guardianship away?”  
“But of course.” Dumbledore nodded. “Unfortunately the blood wards are lost to us now as protection. But the Fidelius charm already worked once to protect Mr. Potter – well it would have worked if the Potters hadn´t been betrayed. Maybe this time we´ll choose a better Secret Keeper. Maybe you want to volunteer?”  
“Why would I?”  
“You seemed quite invested in the boy´s health a few minutes ago.”  
“He´s Lilly´s son. I have no other reason,” Snape responded stiffly.  
Dumbledore sighed. “If you say so.”  
“The boy will go to Malfoy Manor at Christmas”, Snape said briskly. “And until summer I´m sure we´ll find a more suitable guardian than me.”  
“You´ll keep track of him there, won´t you? Just in case?”  
Snape nodded. “I visit my godson on Christmas anyway.”  
“Well I guess that is a start.”  
“And Mr. Potter needs to visit a mind healer.”  
“That will be no problem. There is already an appointment every week set up for Mr. Nott. I´m sure we can coordinate another one.”  
“I´m thinking of putting the boy in our Quidditch team. He has talent and maybe it will keep him busy enough to distract him from… bad habits.”  
There was a twinkle in Dumbledore´s eye. “And this has nothing to do with wanting to win the house cup even though your last seeker proved to be a disappointment?”  
Snape shrugged.”A good Quidditch team is good for moral and therefore for the happiness of the entire castle.”  
He turned to leave.   
“Oh and Severus? Do you think it would be too early to give the boy the invisibility cloak he inherited by his father?”  
Snape refused to be baited and left the class room without telling Dumbledore his opinion on giving a child with a psychical illness to break the rules and steal things one of the most powerful objects in the wizarding world to do just that. Although he really wanted to do just that. With some colorful curse words entwined in his lecture.  
Sometimes he doubted the alleged wisdom Albus Dumbledore had and his own sanity since he always followed suit with the man´s mad plans. If this went on he would be the guardian of Harry Potter before Easter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So since I really want to write a second part, I welcome any ideas from my readers. Should Snape adopt Harry? Or someone else? The Malfoys for example? And what should Harry steal in connection to the Chamber of Secrets? I´ll happyily take good ideas from anyone.

**Author's Note:**

> Second chapter will come soon (hopefully)


End file.
